In transportation and other industries there are often many near field communication (NFC) readers in the field that are distributed in a city or region. Conventionally, when a customer reports that there is an issue with the reader there is no certain way to confirm if the NFC reader is capable of processing a card or other NFC-enabled device. Any issue the customer is experiencing could be induced by the customer himself, a defect in the media the customer is using, and/or the NFC reader. Typically, reported problems result in human technicians being sent to the location of the NFC reader to test the function of the reader with a test NFC card. Given the reasonable likelihood that the error is not indicative of a problem with the NFC reader but rather is a result of user error, many of these service calls end up confirming the NFC reader is functional. These calls can drive up maintenance costs of the NFC readers and prevent technicians from working on other problems.